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'With Friends Like These' by Sarah Nicholson

Casually I look up from my filing to ask Helen about her birthday plans, even though I already know them.
Timidly she blushes behind her long fringe and thick spectacles.
“Just a meal with friends, you can come if you wish, it’s just that Howard is bringing Clare and I …”
The sentence is left to hang in the air like a silky ribbon and I know exactly how it ends.
“Curiosity and all that, I’d love to come,” I purr, all the while continuing to shape my claws into perfect points.
Two days later and I am preened to perfection. Extravagant birthday gift in hand I enter the restaurant fashionably late.
Introductions are made, “Howard you know of course…”
My smile is beaming as I quickly sit down and order the chicken. I am in the perfect spot to observe.
Clare’s physical features are all angular, sticky out elbows, sharp collarbones, pointed nose. She is a bird, picking at her food in the same manner as she picks at people. Extracting the juiciest morsels to play with, feathering her nest with woven gossip.
Howard and I always played this game, attributing animal characteristics to our friends behind their backs.Helen the mole, John the squid and Patricia the hyena. Shy, slimy and annoying.
Howard my ex is laidback and crumpled, a cat who has seen too much in his past eight lives.
He has this knack of keeping Clare’s unfiltered criticism in check, playfully pouncing on her cruel words batting them away like a kitten with a ball.
It will never last I think as I stab the bird on my plate menacingly, licking my lips in anticipation!

I’m not lover of art. I don’t know how to react to a splurge of colours on canvas. Or appreciate fine brush strokes on paper. And yet, this evening, I chance upon your painting. It has started to rain, and I don’t have an umbrella. So I step inside the nearest door. As I brush off the raindrops from my coat, I look around. I’ve walked into an art gallery, and you are there, beaming at me. Urging me to come and look at your art. I hesitate. I don’t want to move around and make appropriate noises. Nor make eye contact with you. I have things to do. But you seem so alone in this space. So needy of appreciation that I walk around the room. You paint local scenes. The farmers’ market. The Dover crossing. The white cliffs seem to be your favourite subject. I cannot believe what I see. This painting: The study of a boy with an aeroplane. I look closer and my breath stops. I turn to look at you. Are you some kind of sorcerer who has drawn me in here? Where did you do this painting? I ask. By the…

Salome is looking shabby. Time to give her a bit of a hand-wash. I don’t know why I called her Salome. It suited her, I suppose. My Arthur thought I was mad naming a knitted toilet roll cover, but I have names for all my bits-and-bobs.
Last Wednesday in the month today and so ‘cleaning out the china cabinet day’. As I swirl the Fairy Liquid in warm water, I think how Mother told me to always keep to my list of chores, no matter what.
Arthur died on the third Thursday in February. It was ‘clean the horse-brasses’ day. Once the Powers That Be had dealt with him, I set to. Now, whenever I do the brasses, I think of Arthur, his chin on his chest and his arms folded neatly. The nurses thought I was bonkers when I told them what I was rushing home for. There was no point hanging around, though, was there?
I’m just drying off The Royal Albert when I hear the back gate click. Bloody Susan again. Wonder what she wants to borrow this time?
“Lena? Just coming to see you’re al…